Mean Mothers
by Temple Cloud
Summary: The first ever Protector of the Unborn obstetrics team swings into action.


This isn't the first birth I've observed, or the first I've been involved in, but it's the first one I have been allowed to assist at. I was there to watch Sister's birth, of course. And I had lots of chances to visit before that, while Sister was still an Unborn, so that I could tell her what to expect from being born. After all, she had been a very young embryo when I was born, and might not have taken it all in. I told her about how the operation worked: how the soft aliens (virtually any species is soft-bodied compared to the Protectors of the Unborn) had cut Mother open, as they were doing now, to lift me out, so that my brain wouldn't be destroyed by the usual birth process.

Since I was telling her telepathically, I wasn't able to edit the thoughts I conveyed, and so she knew how I had lain there, unable to move, while the aliens tried to work out which of the two glands in the birth canal contained the substance that would free me from paralysis, and which contained the one that would wipe out my intelligence as it had Mother's. Sister knew that the aliens had had to guess, and guessed wrong to start with, which was why I had suffered some brain damage, which was why I wasn't as good at communicating with her as my own Unborn, my Daughter, was. I'm not too bad at communicating with members of my own species, but I struggle when talking to the aliens.

But, I told Sister, it was all right now; the aliens had got the substances synthesised and could give her the right one. They'd do the same for Daughter when she was born. (Daughter sent her own excited messages about how much fun it would be when they were able to run around and play at breaking bits off the exercise machinery in their rooms, the way I did.) I sent pictures to both of them of the various sorts of aliens they would meet: some who were heavily armoured like Mother (as Daughter had seen her through my eyes) or like me (as Sister had seen me through Mother's eyes), but didn't have so much in the way of weapons: no teeth to bite with, and no spiked tentacles and clubbed tail to swing with. But then, there were other, smaller and more delicate creatures: ones with pinkish or brownish skin that balanced on two hind legs and manipulated things with their forelimbs, for example, and an insect-like creature who hovered overhead.

Of course, I don't just think of my family members as 'Sister' and 'Daughter' and 'Mother'. We don't have 'names' in the way that aliens do. Most of the aliens around here don't have telepathy, so they communicate with a coded pattern of sounds, and a cluster of sounds like 'Kon-wei' or 'Mer-ki-sun' can mean a person. If I'm talking to one of the aliens about another alien, I try to remember what they call each other, but usually it's easier to send a picture of what their mind feels like: for example, Sister's sensitive, imaginative intelligence, or Mother's raw anger and hunger. But if I'm going to call the being who gave birth to me anything, then 'Mother' is the nearest I can get. I can hardly go on calling her 'my Protector' when I'm no longer protected by being inside her, but am a fully-grown Protector of Unborn myself, and when my Mother would kill and eat me if she got the chance.

Even when Sister was an Unborn, had already been aware of minds near her that didn't smell red and hungry like Mother's, and filled with simple thoughts – 'Kill! Tear! Eat!' – but soft pink minds that smelled kindly, even if some of them had barely-controlled dark undercurrents of fear and disgust. One mind was an iridescent silvery-blue, and tasted not only of kindness but of understanding. Mine was a dark pink, she told me, rougher-textured than the aliens' minds, but still friendly. And she had seen two-legged pink food animals and a spindly six-legged food animal through Mother's eyes while those minds were near, but couldn't be certain they were the same creatures.

We could talk about all this when I was in the cage next to Mother's cage. I didn't yet trust myself to be uncaged, at least when there were vulnerable aliens about. I've practised, and I can stand still for whole minutes at a time, but it makes it very hard to stay awake. Even if I just turn down the speed of the exercise machinery that swings and stabs at me, it's hard not to drift into unconsciousness. It took a lot of practice before I could risk being in a room with aliens whose minds smell like friends but whose bodies look and smell like food. Rather bland, un-armoured soft food, but food all the same.

At any rate, the aliens had to move my cage away from Mother's when Sister was actually born, so that they could concentrate on talking to one telepath at a time. I was still near enough to watch the birth procedure, which was nearly the same as when I was born: flipping Mother over onto the top of her shell, shackling her by all four tentacles and her tail to stop her moving, and walloping her while the alien-surgeon (one of the pink two-legs) cut into her to lift Sister out. I knew that if I were close enough to hear their minds, and still had sharp enough telepathic faculties to hear a non-telepathic alien clearly, I would be hearing the same thoughts and emotions as before. The bigger, stronger creatures who were beating Mother would feeling distressed and guilty, and thinking that this was no way to treat a pregnant woman, and that it was terrible to operate on a patient without anaesthetic. But the gentle, silver-blue mind overhead, which could read Mother's emotions (and didn't need to read her thoughts, as she didn't really think), was laughing, because it knew that Mother was enjoying the stimulation: that she had been getting bored lately, and this birth was the nearest thing to a proper fight that she'd had since I was born.

And while all this was going on, I remembered Mother's own birth, when I had still been a very young Unborn inside her. She had been born, not in this maternity ward with comforting holovids of animals to fight and walking trees from our ancestors' home world coming to attack us, but on a spaceship. When she was an Unborn, she had made mental contact with the Blind Ones, burrowing, worm-like aliens who had somehow learned to travel in space. And she had asked them to take her Protector, her Mother, with her inside, onto their spaceship to take them both to a place (the Blind Ones' planet? Some other planet? I wasn't sure) where they could do some sort of work on the surface. I don't know the details. It's so long since Mother was able to tell me anything about this, and I was too young to take much of it in.

But I remember her birth. Her Protector had already escaped and killed the Blind Ones, I think, but then she had met some new aliens who had come onto the ship looking for survivors. They were different species, but one of them was a two-legs – the same two-legs who delivered me, and was now delivering Sister. I remember Mother talking to it, explaining to it how she would become brain-dead in being born, and asking it to look after me.

The alien kept its promise. We became good friends and remained friends, not only during the rest of my gestation, but even after I was born. I learned many things about its world. It is a "male", the one called 'Kon-wei'. Its species don't self-fertilise; instead, they come in two distinct varieties, "males" and "females", who have to conduct a complex process involving physical contact for the "female" to be fertilised, which is called "sex". The Mother then gives birth after a short time of gestation, to a new creature who is genetically different from either the Mother or the other parent (called a "father"), but with some of the genetic material of each of them.

Their infants are born very small and soft (even from the perspective of a two-legs), unable to walk or care for themselves, and, as they are non-telepaths, knowing very little about the world. The two parents care for the juvenile until adulthood (though earlier in their history, it would have been predominantly the Mother's role to care for very young infants). They feed it (the Mother's body produces a liquid which the infant can digest before it has teeth and can eat solid food). They clean it. If they live on a part of their planet where the air is cold, they wrap it in pieces of insulating material, like the ones I have seen adult two-legs wearing. They "talk" to the infant in their own way, using a coded pattern of noises from the breathing passage, which the infant gradually learns to recognise and use. And they play with it.

I wasn't sure what 'playing together' meant at first. It's fun jumping up to tear bits off the exercise machines when they jab and swing at me, and breaking them open to eat the food hidden inside. Even Mother finds it fun, in a way, even if she isn't capable of thinking the thought, 'I am having fun.' But when Sister was born, and given a cage between Mother's and mine, she started inventing new ways to play. At first, she just ran around happily charging at things and biting chunks off them. But then she started collecting the bits of metal she had torn off, and putting them together. She was trying to send me a thought, but I didn't know what it meant. It was something to do with being in the same cage. I asked for us to be allowed in together, and the aliens agreed. We had a wonderful time wrestling with each other, but Sister seemed to want to do something else: something I didn't understand. My Unborn seemed to understand perfectly, and she explained to me that I needed to pull down some of the big spars that were too high for Sister to reach.

I stood on my hind legs to tear them down and threw them to Sister, and she began doing something with them, which involved standing still and making delicate movements with her tentacles to shape the pieces of metal into some kind of pattern. When she was satisfied, she didn't even go on moving, but squatted and looked at the shape she had bent the metal into, and thought, _beautiful_.

I didn't understand how anyone could just _stand still_ like that for so long without passing out. I didn't know what _beautiful_ meant, either. Stuff was for tearing apart. I leapt on the pieces of metal now, and started doing that.

Sister was so angry that she refused to hit me. We knew each other's minds well enough that she knew I would have appreciated a friendly wallop and the chance to indulge in another bout of wrestling. But instead she backed away, and thought at me: _You idiot! That was my tree!_ And when I saw the picture in her mind, I understood: that the pieces of metal were shaped like some of the carnivorous, walking trees that we'd seen in holovids projected into our cages. I thought I remembered, from when I was a very young Unborn and Mother herself was still and Unborn inside Grandmother, Mother passing onto me the pictures she had seen through Grandmother's eyes of these trees, as Grandmother fought with them. _Remember_, Mother had told me then. _There aren't any trees on the Blind Ones' ship. I will probably be born and lose my mind long before we see trees again. But the Blind Ones want us to tame the surface of their planet. We might have the chance to fight trees there, and I want you to know how._

But Sister didn't want to fight trees, just admire them. She knew that the images of trees that were projected as if they were coming to attack her were just patterns of light, and her metal model of a tree was just – something _beautiful_. And now I looked at it through her eyes, I started to understand what _beautiful_ was.

That was the first time we played together. It went better as Sister and I started to understand each other better, but when Daughter was born, she and Sister played with each other more than they did with me. They seemed to have more in common, and I didn't understand most of what they were doing. Sometimes I felt like killing them, and I felt as if I was turning into a wild beast, like Mother. But I didn't want to go wild. I wanted to be wise, like Sister and Daughter. So instead, I made myself useful by ripping more parts of the cage to shreds, so that I could throw the pieces to Sister and Daughter to use in the things they called their _sculptures_, and even their _tools_ and _machines_.

In the meantime, the aliens were working at educating the three of us (and our Unborn). They brought some ambassadors from the Blind Ones, little burrowing creatures with stings, to think to us about the deal they wanted to make with us. The Blind Ones are better at telepathy than most of the other aliens, and they thought very clear messages to us about how the burrows in their world felt, and how wild and dangerous the surface was (though from the holovids the other aliens showed us, it didn't look anything like as wild as the place my species comes from), and how they wanted to explore it with us, and see the stars through our eyes. They talked about the deal they had made with Mother's generation of Unborn, and asked whether we, as intelligent, telepathic, but physically strong and mobile Protectors of the Unborn, were still willing to come and help them. We assured them that we were. But first, we had to be ready.

Next, the aliens began giving us lessons in anatomy, and surgical tools, and how to deliver an Unborn without causing brain-death. The aliens seemed to feel hurt by what they were telling us about why they couldn't give us drugs to take away the pain, as they would for one of their own kind. We didn't see what they were upset about – having someone cut you open to take an Unborn out without your being able to feel it would be downright _creepy!_ I knew that Sister and Daughter, and Sister's Unborn, were eagerly taking all this in. I _wanted_ to be able to concentrate properly, the way they did, but all this talk of sterilised surgical cutting tools sounded sissy – what's wrong with teeth and tentacles and tails? – and the details about which way to go in to avoid compressing the gland which contains the brain-rotting chemical were too complicated to follow for long. I had to keep breaking off to go and – well, break things off. If I'd stayed to listen to much more of the lecture, I'd probably have got so bored that I started biting Daughter's tail instead of some of the jabbing-spikes.

When Sister's time came, Daughter stayed with her and helped to hold her down while Kon-wei delivered Niece. I like Kon-wei, and there are times when I've even trusted myself to be with him without cage walls between me and him, but not when I'm excited. And with all the bloodshed from a wound smelling so delicious that it's hard to remember that the wounded person is Sister and I love her, I can't _not_ get excited.

Niece was a fine healthy baby who was born knowing everything Sister did, especially about anatomy. Once she'd had the chance to practise with the surgical tools for herself, the aliens wanted her help on the next birth, where her combination of _small_ and _skilful_ would be ideal.

They wanted my help, too.

_But I can't be with soft aliens when I'm excited!_ I pointed out.

'There won't be any soft aliens within reach,' Kon-wei said. 'Even Dr Prilicla' (the leggy, insectile alien with the shimmering silver-blue mind that understood our emotions) 'won't need to hover overhead to monitor this time. After all, you and your friends should be able to do that for each other by now. And – this case really is going to _need_ you.'

So, all of us – Sister, Niece, Daughter, and I – went into Mother's cage as soon as Youngest Sister started letting us know that she needed to be born soon. We had all agreed on who would do what. Daughter grabbed Mother's front tentacles and pulled them to their full extent, well out of the way of her sharp teeth. Niece grabbed Mother's hind tentacles and tail. Niece climbed onto Mother's shell and removed a large enough segment to extract the Unborn.

Mother sensed that _something_ was attacking her, and began struggling to get free so that she could swipe at whatever-it-was. I swung out my tail and hit her hard on the right foreleg, which distracted her attention for long enough that I could jab the point of one tentacle at her eye.

Daughter winced and thought at me, _You monster!_ She's been spending too much time with aliens. But I _am_ a monster, and so is Mother, and right now, what she needed more than anything was a monster to fight with. She was pure violence, unrestrained by affection or thoughts, and she was struggling so hard that Daughter and Sister could barely keep hold of her. But she was old and tired, on her third birth, and I was spoiling for the all-out fight I could never allow myself to have with Sister or Daughter. Besides, I could read Mother's hazy feelings about where the attack seemed to be coming from, and she couldn't read my thoughts as I decided to do something different. I jabbed, clubbed, kicked and bit until New Sister was safely out (though still paralysed) and Niece was carrying her out of the cage to be injected with the hormone that frees the muscles.

I stopped attacking and withdrew to a safe distance. Mother started to droop, now that her body was no longer flooded with the excitement of having something to fight. Sister and Daughter let go of her tentacles, and all of us left the cage before turning the automatic jabbing machines back on. She woke up again as they began, and we left her happily attacking everything in sight.

So now my species is ready to be discharged from the hospital. We can be obstetric surgeons for each other, without needing the aliens' help. Sister and Niece have been taking lessons in how to synthesise the drugs they need. But I don't want us all to leave just yet – not while Mother is still alive. A wild Protector on our home planet wouldn't usually survive more than three births, but my Mother seems strong and healthy so far, and might go on to have two or three more babies. And if she does, then with each birth she'll need a good fight to distract her from the pain, and no-one else here – even the other Protectors – knows quite how that feels. I'm the nearest to a wild Protector that she could meet here.

She deserves to be attacked by someone who understands.


End file.
